Frank, K4FMH, is one of my fellow “presenters” on the ICQPodcast. He is also Professor Emeritus at Mississippi State University, where he taught statistics, survey research methods, and GIS/Remote Sensing over four decades. In other words, he’s a pretty smart guy.
His latest effort is a study that compares a list of popular HF transceivers and receivers sold in the last 50 years by these three criteria:
- retail price
- measured receive performance by Rob Sherwood NC0B
- overall satisfaction as reported in the reviews on eHam.Net.
The full report will appear in the National Contest Journal in two parts, with Part I in the current issue. Frank has, however, agreed to let me publish the chart below that summarizes the results. (Click on the chart for the full-size version.)
These are pretty interesting results. I currently own a Flex 6400 and an Elecraft KX3, and my previous rig was an IC-7300, so I’m feeling pretty good about my selections.
I think the one criterium that could be a bone of contention is the eHam reviews. One could argue that they’re not a great indicator of customer satisfaction, and whenever I read reviews there, I take them with a BIG grain of salt. As Frank points out, however, they are “our only consistent source of such consumer satisfaction measures across a wide array of ham radio products, including HF rigs.” In other words, it’s really the best we have.
Anyway, what do you think about the study? How does your rig rank? What nit would you like to pick with this study?
Walter Under says
I guess that is useful, but the category names and color coding are a mess. What on earth is “Hot Rod” supposed to convey?
I would name the categories “Bang for Buck” (very high performance/satisfaction, lower cost), “Runner Up” (high performance/satisfaction, lower cost), and “Pay for Performance” (very high performance/satisfaction, higher cost).
Even better, I’d ditch the categories and use the quartiles to make separate columns for cost and performance. Cost would be “$” through “$$$$” for the four quartiles and performance/satisfaction would be “*” through “****”. Those columns are easy to scan when they are left-aligned, because they work like in-column bar graphs.
Lumping two price quartiles together is a little odd. That puts $800 rigs and $3000 rigs in the same pool. I don’t know about your wallet, but I don’t consider those to be the same class of purchase.
If I was going to color code any thign, I’d label the “Sweet Spot” rigs green and stop right there. Maybe add pale green for the “Hot Rod” category.
Can we get the raw data to clean up the presentation?
Dave New, N8SBE says
I’m not familiar with the “Sherwood Performance Index” and some Googling didn’t seem to turn up any information. Sherwood’s receiver data on his web site is ranked by only one of several important criteria, so ordering in the table found at his site could be considered subjective, depending on what criteria are considered the most important to the operator.
It would be helpful if Frank published his formulas, so we can see how he arrived at his rankings.
Goody K3NG says
Yes, eHam reviews are, well, suspect. I’d have more faith in that metric if the report provided a “filtered” eHam rating number with “I didn’t get this rig yet but I hear it’s great”, “Just got this rig yesterday and it’s great”, and “This rig is garbage, 0 stars (no other explanation)” ratings removed. The Sherwood metrics reward great receiver performance. It doesn’t reflect things like usability, user interface, user experience, physical design, etc. Furthermore, the price shown for the Elecraft KX3 reflects a base model with no options, and I’m guessing the other Elecraft models are base models as well. It seems few people run base models with no options. I find with Elecraft you tend to need to add options to have a radio comparable with a typical out-of-the-box Kenwood, Icom, or Yaesu. Last, I think one needs to group the radios by form factor and typical use case. It’s kind of difficult to compare an Elecraft KX2 with a Kenwood TS-890S. Using a TS-890S in the field while hiking would be miserable, and a KX2 in a big gun out-for-blood contest likewise.
I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water; I know creating this sort of report is very difficult.
Dr. Frank M. Howell says
Hi Goody,
They’re in the NCJ articles…Dan has the full length paper or you can email me directly for a PDF. I’m good on QRZed.
73,
Frank
K4FMH
Dr. Frank M. Howell says
Note: I’ve given Dan the go-ahead to post the pdf I sent him of the full report. It contains the full statistical details.
73,
Frank
K4FMH
Dan KB6NU says
The PDF containing the full report is now posted here.
Dr. Frank M. howell says
Thanks Dan.
I’ve also posted in on my companion website, foxmikehotel.com, at this URL: https://foxmikehotel.com/hamography/studies/.
This should clear up a number of Qs about what I did and did not do in this study.
73,
Frank
K4FMH